Monday, August 8, 2016

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Problems and Possible Solutions

Since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (AU) started rolling out over this past week some of our clients have had questions and reported various problems with the installation process. We thought it would be helpful to share our observations and a couple of resources on this subject.

Side note: If you've updated your operating system from Windows 7 or 8.1 to 10 then you should consider getting the Anniversary Update. Besides strengthened security measures, this update includes improvements to the Start Menu, Edge browser, Action Center notification system, Cortana, and more.

If you haven't received AU automatically yet, you can start the process manually: Go to Settings (the little gear icon); then click on Update & Security, then Learn More. That should open a page with a box that says Get the Anniversary Update Now. Clicking the box should start the process. Note: Downloading and then installing this update will take a while. Depending on your connection and your computer, it could be an hour or more and will include a couple of restarts.

In most cases, this process unfolds without a hitch. But there have been reports of problems where the process hangs up or fails. The good news is that checking History in Windows Update Assistant will usually give you an error code to help narrow down the problem and find a solution.

For example, when installing AU on one of my own computers the process came to a grinding halt. Checking History I found error code 800705b4 as the likely problem. Doing some online research I found the suggestion to use Media Creation Tool (second option on the page) for the AU installation process and this did the trick. Other suggestions included disabling security software during the install process, but it wasn't necessary, at least in my case.

If you run into a problem, here's a link that will take you to the Microsoft Support site where you can search by error code. For other Windows 10 related issues you can try the Microsoft Answers Community. Just put your question in the search box and you'll get a list of possible answers. These are both very handy resources.

Hope this is helpful!